Intorduction to Cosmic Rays

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The Space Environment
Professor G. D. Earle Department of
Physics William B. Hanson Center for Space
Sciences The University of Texas at Dallas
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What Is Space Science?

• The energy that controls the physics of space
  throughout our solar system comes from our local
  star, the sun.
• Radiation heat, light, X-rays
• Particles
• Flares, sunspots, etc.
• Space scientists study these
• processes their effects on
• planetary environments.
• The ultimate goal is to understand
• the system well enough to predict
• space weather.

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The Solar Terrestrial Environment
Plasma exists in the solar wind, magnetosphere,
and ionosphere
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The Near-Earth Space Plasma Environment
Peak plasma density occurs where the product of
solar UV intensity and NN attains a
maximum. Neutral density always exceeds plasma
density below 1000 km.
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Near Earth Space Weather Effects

• The aurora is the best known product of solar
  dynamics.

Auroras are produced by energetic particles from
the sun and the Earths magnetosphere streaming
into the atmosphere along magnetic field lines.
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The Global View
When viewed from satellites in space, the auroras
occur in oval shaped regions centered around the
magnetic poles. The ovals expand toward the
equator as solar/magnetic storms intensify.
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How Does Space Weather Affect Us?
Space weather produced by solar and magnetic
storms can affect telecom systems, power grids,
GPS, computer chip fault rates, and orbiting
satellites.
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Ways to Study the Space Environment Instrumented
satellites provide global coverage over time.
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Space Science Campaigns

• Some of the most effective space science
  investigations result from coordinated campaigns
  in which multiple probes (rockets, radar, and
  satellites) simultaneously focus on a single
  phenomenon or region of space.
• Rockets provide high resolution data over short
  time scales in specifically targeted regions of
  space.
• Satellites provide lower resolution, but larger
  scale coverage.
• Radars, lidars, and other ground-based techniques
  monitor temporal variations at fixed sites.
• The combination of all three techniques provides
  much needed synergy and enables breakthrough
  science.

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What Does the Future Hold?
Data from single satellites in orbit suffer from
space/time ambiguities. This complicates data
assimilation, analysis, and conclusions.
Future missions will likely 1. Be comprised of
multi-satellite constellations requiring
miniaturized instruments. 2. Focus on
comparative planetary studies to enhance our
understanding.